International Patent Application No. W0 92/03740 ("the '3740 application") describes an acceleration sensor which has a suspension and which is produced in surface micromechanical technology. In this acceleration sensor, the suspension is formed by suspending a bending element between two anchorage points which are anchored on a substrate. There is then attached to the bending element a seismic mass which, during an acceleration, applies a force action to the bending element in such a way that the bending element flexes. In such a suspension of the bending element between two anchorages, stresses may arise between the substrate and the bending element if the material of the bending element expands or contracts to a greater extent than the substrate in the course of the production process or as a result of temperature differences.
A paper by Mohr et al. (Microsystem Technologies 90, 1st Int. Conference on Microsystems, Berlin, 10-13 Sep. 1990, Springer-Verlag, page 529 ff.) describes a further method for the production of micromechanical components in surface micromechanical technology, which method is suitable for the production of suspensions and matching acceleration sensors.